You Fucking Rock, New Zealand

I decided to spend a month in New Zealand. Best decision ever! It was one of the most exciting, exhilarating and momentous months of my life so far. I experienced the beginning of friendships that I'm sure will last a lifetime, checked off things from my bucket list, and even did a few things that I thought I would never do! There are also a few (make that a lot!) of things that aren't even suitable for this blog!

This is New Zealand

So I decided to go on the Stray Bus because of its reputation for going off the beaten path and not being as crazy for hookups and partying as the competition... I am getting old, you know! But it didn't exactly turn out that way, and I think our bus could have rivaled even the craziest of party busses at times!

Our Stray Bus!

The first morning I met two of my favourites, Steph and Emily, right on the steps of our hostel, and we pretty much became instant besties right then. The bus was pretty full so I ended up grabbing a free seat beside a cute looking guy, but he obviously didn't want to talk to me as he promptly closed his eyes and went, or more likely, pretended to go straight to sleep. Haha thanks a lot for the warm welcome Evan!  Little did I know then that soon he would become one of my besties too.

Me, Steph and Emily, first day friends!

Raglan beach was our first stop. This was where one of my favourite 90's movies, the Endless Summer, was filmed *swoon* That movie is totally responsible for spawning my life long crush on blond, goofy, shaggy haired surfer dudes! Anyway, walking along the beach we met Jasmine, Linnea and Julie - the only one of us who was actually badass enough to go surfing! That day our original group of six girls was formed and we pretty much became inseparable after that. The rest is history...

Linnea can't wait to run into the ocean



Jazzy and Steph on a romantic stroll along the beach

Just look at that reflection!

My bitches

One of my first bucket list checkmarks I got in New Zealand was waterfall rappelling, and even better, I got to do it in a cave with glow worms! Me, Tommy and Emil went together, and we rappelled down 3 underground waterfalls and trekked through tiny caves to come out in huge chambers where the ceiling was lit with the dazzling bluish twinkling glow worm larvae. It looked like the most beautiful night sky you've ever seen.  I loved it, although there was one point where I reached the bottom of the waterfall and kinda fell a little and ended up with my whole face in the crashing water, then my light turned off and I was left wet and dark all alone at the bottom. Not the best moment lol!

I'm rappelling in a cave!

It was awesome to hang out with Tommy and Emil, who would later become two of my favourites on the bus. Tommy let me listen to his Swedish hip hop and Emil kept on taking off his shirt. I played a prank on Tommy n his last day - I hid all of his underwear in the blanket of the top bunk in his room, thinking he would definitely find it there eventually. But turns out he didn't check there before he left, and had to travel all the way to Thailand with no undies. Sorry Tommy, I owe you some boxers! Also, the next person who sleeps in that bunk is in for quite a surprise!

Me, Jazzy, Tommy and Emil

Here's another good Tommy story... It was kind of a rainy windy day when we reached Abel Tasman National Park. The epic day of kayaking and hang gliding we had planned was cancelled because of weather, but we ended up doing a fantastic 10k coastal hike instead. Tommy decided to go for a swim in the inviting blue water, but jumped out after about 5 minutes... holding his man parts! We wondered what was wrong, and were horrified when he touched himself and came out with totally bloody fingers! Turns out he was attacked by the killer sea lice on his penis. The blood seriously soaked through about a million Kleenexes. Poor Tommy! I hope he has recovered nicely.

Abel Tasman National Park

Tommy, mere moments before the attack!

One of the most interesting days was learning about the Maori culture by visiting a traditional Morae village. We had a sleepover with everyone on the bus (about 40 of us in the same room) where Jasmine, Emily and I all got spots on the mattresses around Thor, because his name is awesome, obvi, and we wanted to get to know him. We even took a picture of us all together. But we did just end up having lots of girl talk and listening to the bedtime stories the Maori lady told us, and Thor seemed a little shy. He hopped off the bus there, but we met up with him about a week later. We went up to say hi, but then it became painfully obvious that he had absolutely no recollection of meeting us before! He didn't remember us at all lol! I guess we were just not that memorable that night.

Non- memorable moment with Thor at the Maori house (check out the wall carvings behind us!)

When we got to the National Park, most of us were really stoked to do the Tongararo crossing, one of New Zealand's most epic hikes to a volcano mountain. But the weather forecast was calling for gale force winds so it was cancelled. Bummer! But being the resourceful  young people we are, we made up a backup plan within minutes. (But was actually a few people's plan all along *cough cough* Evan) Luckily our hostel was equipped with multiple outdoor hot tubs. Plan B, done. We hit up the liquor store next door, hopped into our bikinis and soaked in the hot tubs for hours! It turned out to be one of the best days ever.

Not too shabby for a Plan B.

One night we stayed in a bunch of little cabins in the woods at a place that came to be known as Tiny Cow. First we had an awesome potluck, and then the fun began. Way too much fun. We made special deals for Matty's ciders (Emily's bucket list, check!) and then I successfully carried out a top secret mission, never to be spoken of again. That is all.

Hey Matty, what do we have to do to get one of your ciders?!

One of the best days of my life happened at Franz Josef. The day started off with a helicopter ride up through a glacially carved mountain valley where we landed directly on the middle of the snowy surface of the Franz Josef glacier. There we began a 3 hour trek up the ice, squeezing through crevasses and even exploring a newly discovered ice cave. When we were done, we took the helicopter back to town, and grabbed a quick lunch before being rushed off to our next adventure - SKYDIVING!!

Glacier hike = happy Jeanette

The view from inside the ice cave

Me, Julie, Linnea and Steph were the quietest we've ever been on the drive there. Not a word was said the entire 30 minute car ride I think! When we arrived, we suited up and Steph and I were put into a teeny tiny plane with no seats or anything inside. We climbed to 12000 ft, and then Steph and her instructor moved towards the open plane door. In an instant, they were gone. They dropped completely out of sight just like that. At that moment, I was on the verge of tears and was totally rethinking my decision... but then all of a sudden I found myself hanging out the side of the plane and not a moment later I was out too! It was a totally incredible experience and I tried to remember my friend Harvey's advice to just pretend I was flying like a bird. I had the view of the glacier on one side and the ocean on the other with some farm fields down below. It was awesome. I'm so glad I didn't die!



Flying like a bird!

You tend to make a lot of funny faces while skydiving (unless you're Julie!)

We didn't die! Lovin life!

The day after Franz Josef was a totally crazy day on the bus, best bus day ever! It all started with Ivet drinking a beer at about 8 am, and coercing Evan to do the same, although I don't think it took too much convincing. We stopped at Lake Matheson, the most photographed beautiful mountain scene in New Zealand, and started the walk to the lookout with a bottle of wine in tow and music playing from Evan's phone. We had a dance party on the trail and I perfected my "cougar pose" by the lookout. Then at the Fox Glacier lookout, Matty tickled a horses chin, giving it a massively huge boner! We got back on the bus and the drinking continued. I think we also ended up playing the question game. But that kind of turned into a strip show by the boys, since we chanted "TAKE OFF YOR SHIRT" to everyone who went up there to answer some questions! The star performer was Matty, who ripped off his shirt and hopped on the pole twirling round and round, on a moving bus like a total pro and gave the sexy eyes to the camera simultaneously. Major life talent right there! A little while later we stopped to go to a beach and skip rocks, but the super high bridge was what caught everyone's attention. Pinky, Matty, Evan, Tommy, Jacob and Linnea stripped off most of their clothes and climbed over the railing to jump off into the glacier river flowing below!

Dance party on the hiking trail!

Beautiful Lake Matheson, too bad all those good looking people are blocking the view!

How can you not love these faces?

And especially these ones too!?

My crew and I spent a lot of time in Queenstown which is a super cool little town with lots of extreme sports to do and lots of bars great for partying. And partying we did. The Australian bachelor party night stands out as one of the best parties of all time... I'm not gonna name names but here's a taste of what happened... someone ended up dancing on all fours on the pool table, one of us broke their all time record for most people made out with in one night, girls made out with girls, many body shots were taken off the chest of a particularly buff Australian boy, ice cubes were passed from person to person using only their mouths, someone may have taken one Australian man home only to be disappointed in what he had to offer lol. Another standout night was Halloween, when everyone dressed up in awesome costumes and pretty much got plastered. I had a lot of fun poking people with my devil stick! Another awesome night was when we went to the Cowboys bar, we all had our turn riding the mechanical bull, and Matty and Jazzy got up to some naughty activities at the pub table! The pictures will never be released to the public.

Queenstown

Party time!

Halloween!

Most of us took a little side trip down to Milford Sound. It was an incredibly beautiful fjord with tons of waterfalls. But something was up with our group... the weather was rainy, we were not feeling our new bus driver, and we were all coming down with a cold. So I don't think we appreciated the beauty as much as we might have if that was say the first thing we'd done in New Zealand. But it was awesome because I saw my 5th penguin species of the year there!  We went to Invercargill, where the #1 tourist attraction was the hardware store and #2 was the tourist information booth. Haha, sounds awesome doesn't it? But we did check out the rose gardens and the museum which were both cool.

Milford Sound cruise, don't we look happy, especially Matt?

We spent one day at a little getaway at the base of Mount Cook. There, we did an hour hike up to the base of the glacier where there is a glacier lake filled with little icebergs. It was a beautiful hot sunshiny day and the scenery was incredible! Badass Burt even went for a swim in the freezing cold lake!

Mount Cook hike

The glacier river

When we got back to Queenstown again, it was back to being sunny and beautiful. Yay! So we went for breakfast and then ended up hanging out in the park all day. We braided each other's hair, drank 4 bottles of champagne, took lots of selfies, and me and Matty got engaged!, we met Alan from the hangover, and then we met hot Jessica with the mustache, and then I decided to get a new tattoo, it's a bird on my foot, and then me and Matty broke up, but we're still best friends.

Park hangs

The last adventure activity we all got to do together was rafting at Rangitata. We seriously almost refused to go when they tried to split our group up in different rafts. That's how much we love each other! So the 7 of us piled into Dan's raft for an awesome day. We started off practicing while floating down the calm sections, but soon we hit the first class 5 rapid. No flip! We had an awesome team, did I mention? Shortly after that we hit another series of class fives again with no problem. We were even able to save some of the other rafters who did flip and looked like they were going to pass out! Thanks to Dan who was one of the best raft guides I've ever seen, definitely better than some I know who think it's fun to flip people in class 5 water. We finished off with a 9 m cliff jump and a great bbq before settling in for the night.

Killing it in the Class 5

Anyway, I've come to realize that it's not so much the experiences you're having, but it's the people you're doing them with that really count. I have to give a special shoutout to everyone on the Stray bus who made the trip what it was. You are all awesome in my books and I fucking love you guys! First off, we had the best bus driver around, Pinky! I gotta admit, if he was the only one to ever drive all of the busses I ever take for the rest of my life, I think I'd be cool with that ;). Steph, you were my first friend and partner in crime, Emily you are the funniest American ever, Linnea linguini brought us the infamous phrase 'snailed it' (I will never forget you acting it out on the railing and your purse!), Jazzy Juggs with your beautiful bosoms in your purple shirt, Julie our crazy Quebecois chick with the tongue ring, a wild side and a secret mansion, Ivet who can make a green hoodie look so damn sexy, Evan "I get free stuff wherever I go" "'Murica",  Matty our pole dancing underwear model / bedtime story aficionado / cuddle raper / Stray strangler, Burt the badass, Pieter with a constant perma-smile, Larkin who has no fear, been bungy jumping since she was 10 NBD, Thor, well, his name is Thor what more do you want?! I could go on... but  this is already WAY too long. Thanks for the best time ever guys.

The whole group

Fiji's Number 1 Bag Lady, Me!

My last week volunteering at Barefoot Island was awesome. I was able to almost triple the number of dives I've done! I'm now up to 27! I feel so much more confident and at ease in the water now, like a real diver. Some days I felt like I could have just swam off into the deep with the Manta Rays and never come up!

Everything is A-OK

Me and my co-volunteer Justine formed the J-Team, Marine Warriors, and it was our mission to remove as many of the Crown of thorns starfish as possible. When you have a reef full of evil starfish, who are you gonna call... the J-TEAM!! I was usually the bagger, and Justine, or our divemaster, Al was usually the hooker (get your mind out of the gutter lol) because they were the ones to pry them off the reef with a metal hook and then I would come along and collect them in the bag.

J-Team!

I really feel like I accomplished a lot during my time at Barefoot Island. By the end of my two weeks, I had earned the title of best bag lady ever! I was not scared of those poisonous thorny bastards- I just wanted to get them in the bag as soon as possible so we could go find more! Poison, shmoison! I also broke the record of highest number of COTs removed from the reef by a volunteer EVER!!! YES, that's right!! But I think I also broke the record for most hungover volunteer ever... the morning after Fiji Day was not pretty... everyone told me I was turning green on our boat ride back to shore after our first dive, and they were right. But I powered through and got it done! Also an honourable mention goes out to Justine and Al who shared the prize as the best hookers ever! hehehe!

Our record breaking haul of COTs in the wheelbarrow... 5 bags, 98 nasty starfish off the reef

When I was done at Barefoot Island, I spent a few days on the main island checking it out. There were so many interesting people there. I met an awesome (arguably crazy?) Elvis impersonator from Atlantic City, who ended up being my neighbour at my hostel. Each morning I would wake up to the sweet Elvis voice coming from the room next door coaxing my eardrums to start a new day. And then there was the Canadian white rapper, who partied harder than anyone I've ever seen, I swear that kid didn't sleep, but he made up a totally awesome and hilarious half hour long rap about me and my friend Semi on the spot! We only wished we had captured it on video! Damn!

Me, Semi from Barefoot and Elvis went to the natural mud pools near Nadi

I spent my last day in Fiji at the Cloud 9 Bar. This is a sleek, modern, floating lounge / dance club right out in the middle of the ocean beside the world famous Cloudbreak reef. I have never dreamed that such a place existed. It was a perfect day of lounging in the sun, watching the surfers and chatting with them when they came in for a drink, snorkeling, and diving off the top deck (scary!). Needless to say it was a great relaxing day and the perfect wind down from all my volunteer activities. But then on the way back to town while we were riding in the boat, it started to rain. I thought it would be a kinda crappy way to end off the day, but the rain tapered down, and directly in front of us formed a big huge rainbow. We cruised for about 15 minutes straight towards it, a beautiful swatch of colours illuminating the sky. As I took in that moment, and breathed in the fresh clean sea air after the rain, it felt like the perfect ending to an incredible trip.

Cloud 9 Bar

My main activity of the day :)

Rainbow! Bye Fiji!

Manta Rays, Evil Starfish and Giant Clams

I was really excited to come to this island in Fiji since it is famous for the Manta Ray channel, a spot where the species regularly congregates from May - September each year. But for my first 5 days here, the Mantas decided to take a hike, and they weren't around. I was beginning to worry that I'd completely missed the season! But yesterday, I woke up to the staff banging a drum going around the resort yelling "MANTA RAY! MANTA RAY!" at the top of their lungs. They seemed almost as excited as me! I hopped into my bikini faster than ever, and literally ran down to the boat. The staff were looking at me a little weird and were like, you don't actually have to run, you know, haha :P It took a while to find the ray, but once we did, it was amazing. For a few minutes, I swam right above it as it effortlessly glided through the turquoise blue depths, not even noticing I was there. Here is a video taken by my fellow volunteer a few days ago. Enjoy!

I've started working on a few of my volunteer projects this past week. One of the jobs is to remove the nasty Crown of Thorns Seastar from the reef. These creatures skulk around the coral, munching on it and devastate large tracts of reef in their path. I can't decide if they are ugly or beautiful, but either way, they are covered with long venomous spikes that would not feel good if they pricked you. We go diving and pry them off the reef with a hooked piece of rebar, and then collect them in a big nylon bag. My job is usually the bag carrier, since they can be tricky to spot, but that means that my partner is always pointing these spiky masses of venom at me underwater, and I have to manoeuver them into a bag with an opening roughly the same size as the creature without pricking myself or my partner. It is not easy!! But it is lots of fun.

Me with one Crown of Thorns

Our catch of the day

Alan digs them a grave behind the dive shop.  RIP evil starfish.

One of the reasons the Crown of Thorns is such a problem, even though it is native to Fijian waters, is that all of its natural predators have been overfished. Another part of the project here is to reintroduce one of the overfished predators called the Giant Clam. They can reach up to a meter in size when fully grown and weigh over 300kg! So we have an underwater nursery here where we are growing some baby Giant Clams to basically replant them on the reef when they are big enough. Then they will filter feed and remove the Crown of Thorns larvae from the water naturally.

The clams in the nursery tend to get a bit sandy, and we keep track of their growth, so we dive down and clean them off with a toothbrush and measure them.

One of the older clams, this guy is about a foot long!

Cleaning off the little clams in the cages (yep that's me in the back!)

Marlies showing you how it's done with a toothbrush

Fiji is Paradise

Hi everyone! For the next two weeks I'll be doing a marine conservation and diving volunteer program with Vinaka Fiji on the little island of Drawaqa in the Yasawas region of Fiji. I seriously can't believe I am here. I am pinching myself constantly to remind myself that this is real! My lifelong dream of studying the marine biology of coral reefs has finally come true!! Woo!

I arrived yesterday in a little boat and hopped off onto the white sandy beach at Barefoot Resort. My super cool volunteer coordinators (a retired couple from New Zealand) met me and explained a little about what I'm going to be doing. Basically this:

Manta Rays, happy dance!!!

Then they sent me to my hostel dorm room, which turned out to look like this:

The window on the right is where my bed is :)

With this view:

Mind blown.

Today I started learning some of my reef fish species in preparation for starting the official marine biodiversity surveys tomorrow. I have to memorize the 27 species of butterfly fish here in Fiji, so all morning I studied this card, and then went out snorkeling to find some in the wild. I saw 16 of the 27 species on 3 snorkel trips today.

The place I'm staying is also a hotel, so there is a ton of other fun stuff to do as well. Since it was Sunday here, and technically my day off, I tried to fit in as many fun things as possible too! Me and one of my new friends circumnavigated the island in a kayak, which took about 2 hours! Then we went snorkeling and then a bunch of us went rappelling on a cliff at sunset! It was a great day for sure.

Can't wait to see what the next two weeks will bring!

Life Philosophies from Punk Rock and Bill and Ted

So you all probably know by now that I'm a total biology and environment geek. So, it's no surprise that my project for my time at home in Toronto has been to read a lot of environmental books and watch a bunch of nature documentaries. It's been great leading the retirement life with my parents reading on the porch! But unfortunately, in all of these books and movies, the messages are scary. Seriously scary and fucked up, people! The ocean is becoming so warm and acidic from carbon emissions that all the coral reefs will most likely die by the year 2100. Sea ice is melting so fast that within our lifetime there may be no polar bear habitat left. Right now there is more plastic than plankton in some parts of the ocean. Aren't you already depressed?! OMG, me too!!


So what can we do? We ultimately have two choices... we either give up, or fight. I have been seriously considering giving up and just running away, living in a cave by myself to get away from our crazy capitalist society that is ruining everything. But it would probably get pretty damp and lonely in there. Instead, I choose to fight!

But what does fighting mean to me? Well, I'm still figuring that out for the most part. Right now I'm super content exploring this amazing planet we call home and expanding my knowledge and experience of the world, working on conservation projects going on around the planet, and sharing my experiences with you. I feel like at the end of my journey I will be able to put it all together and do something to make a positive impact. I wish I was a super brilliant engineer who could find some amazing technology to solve the world's problems, but sadly my brain just doesn't work that way, dammit!!

Even though I think we are at the point where as a society we do have to fight in order to avoid a large scale catastrophe, I am also aware of the bigger picture. No matter what happens at this point in time, life will go on. After all, don't forget that there have been 5 great extinctions in the history of our planet where 95% of life forms died out. We wouldn't be here if those didn't happen. Many scientists believe that we are on the verge of the sixth great extinction right now. But even if life as we know it is going to hell, we are still here now in this great mysterious experiment we call life, and there's really nothing we can do about that. And in the big picture of the universe, do we really even matter? Probably not. We're really just an interesting fluke of evolution. As The Vandals point out in one of my favourite 90's punk songs, in 5 billion years the sun will explode and no one will know that we were ever here, it's a fact!

So, you know what, we might as well enjoy life and make the most of it! Happiness is the most important thing. Not money, not status, not collecting stuff, just doing something that makes you truly happy. Fuck what other people think and do something that makes YOU happy! No one wants to wake up when they are 80 and think back on your younger years and wish you had done tons of stuff you didn't do!

Right now I've been the happiest ever traveling and volunteering. This has been my dream for so long and I'm living it!! It is the best decision I ever made, to follow my heart and it's been totally amazing. But eventually I'll have to go back to work. We spend so much of our lives at work, that it better be something enjoyable. But why is this so hard in our society?! I'm going to go for it, and try to make a living doing something I love.

For me that means less desk (don't I look overjoyed?)...

...and more of this! (that's a baby tern!)

Awesome hobbies are also super important. I don't want to watch life happen on TV, I want to make a super interesting life happen in reality! For me it's mostly about adventure, nature and outdoors. Put me near the ocean or a snowy mountain and I'll be good. But of course my life needs a healthy dose of partying, dancing and rock concerts too!  

But probably the very best thing in life is surrounding yourself with people you love and who love you. Positive people who boost your soul are where it's at. For me, I am infinitely blessed to have my mom and dad and so many friends that I love.

My bff's since Grade 9!

For me it's really that simple. I don't want to make tons of money or have tons of stuff. I'd be way happier sharing a cool little eco-friendly house (Treehouse maybe? Solar powered definitely!) with cool people, my own veggie garden and a mountain or ocean in the backyard where I can go hiking or rock climbing or scuba diving or wildlife watching or whatever other adventure I dream up!

My dream house!

So that's it, I'm putting this out to the universe, now all there is left to do is continue living it and loving it, and making it happen. We can all create the uncaged life we dream of. Let go of conventions and expectations and go for it!

I watched this movie with my Dad when I was probably about 7 years old. The message has stuck with me for life, and Bill and Ted sum up my life philosophy quite nicely... 

Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes!